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Saturday, 4 July 2015

The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Should they pay for the repair?

I bought an LG refrigerator in January 2013. In April 2015, the ice dispenser and freezer stopped working. I called the store and told them to recommend someone who was familiar with their products to fix the fridge, and the technician concluded, after troubleshooting, that the compressor needed to be replaced. He asked for a deposit so that he could place an order for a new compressor. After fitting the new compressor, he charged me P2600, including the P500 deposit I had paid.

On the refrigerator it is written that the fridge carries a warranty of 10 years on the compressor. Seeing that mine is only 2 years old, I have since approached the store to cover the cost of replacing the compressor, but they are saying that I must communicate directly with LG, something I don't agree with, since I never had any purchase agreement with LG. While I was waiting for the fridge to be fixed, I had gone to the store and told them that I was going to suspend payment of my account with them and that I would only pay the difference if the cost of repair was lower than the balance on my account, which was about P1300 at the time. They insist that I must continue paying my account but they are not willing to cover the cost of repair of the fridge.

Please advise, as I believe that they must pay me for the cost of repair.

This is complicated. I’m guessing that your fridge came with a basic 1-year warranty but with the 10-year warranty for the compressor on top? So clearly it was sensible of you to realize when the fridge went wrong that it might not be covered by the warranty. However when you realized that the problem was with the compressor you should have gone back to the store from where you bought the fridge and alerted them to it and asked them to repair it under the extended warranty for that component.

I suspect that’s where your problem now lies. By using a third-party technician to replace the compressor you’ve might have breached the 10-year warranty for that specific component. That’s probably why they’re saying that they won’t cover the cost of the repair.

Above all other things, no matter how angry or disappointed you are, you must not stop paying the monthly installments on your account. If you do so they can repossess the fridge, sell it and deduct the price they get for it from your balance. I guarantee that you’ll still owe money, even after that and you won’t even have a fridge any more.

Must I reload so often?

I have a problem, I am using a Samsung tablet 3 of which am still paying but after every 3 months its software expires and it has to be sent to the manufacturer for reloading. So my concern is, the phone guarantee expires on September these year, which means after September I will be forced to dig from my pocket for the software to be reloaded . My question is what must I do for this problem of software to be permanently solved?

This sounds very suspicious to me. I’m not a Samsung or Android user but I find it hard to believe that anything needs to be reloaded that often or that regularly. After you posted this on Facebook one member of the Consumer Watchdog group (who seemed to be an expert) suggested that this might be a trial version of Android that expires after 3 months and which then must be reloaded. That’s not what you would expect from a reputable store selling reputable products.

Whether or not this is correct it’s certainly not good enough that you must have everything reloaded this often

I think we need to escalate this one. Send me the details of the store and when you bought the device and we’ll get in touch with them. Meanwhile I suggest you go to the Samsung repair center in the Main Mall in Gaborone and get them to take a look at the device and to see if they can diagnose what’s wrong with it.

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